[Tutor] constructors

[Erik Price]

On Wednesday, April 10, 2002, at 06:45  AM, Alexandre Ratti wrote:

> My understanding is that a constructor is useful to make sure that the 
> object and its default values are initialised properly.

Since Python is loosely/weakly/dynamically typed, does initializing 
really matter a great deal?  Or is it just to allow us to use 
polymorphism in a later method (by not requiring that later method to 
specify a tuple over a list, for instance, because a tuple has already 
been specified in the constructor, which makes the later method more 
"general").

> The __init__ constructor is executed when a class instance is created, 
> hence you are sure it runs once (at least in "classic" classes; the 
> rules may have changed for the new-type classes in Python 2.2).

I am using 2.2 and probably won't need to use an older version.  But can 
you tell me a bit more about "new-type classes"?  And how they're 
different from "classic" classes?



Thank you,

Erik